You already have a CPU and a GPU, prepare to get a PPU

Post by **MKJ** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:11 pm

Mogul wrote:Having a powerful GPU and a good PPU would free up sooo much work on the processor. It's a good move, in my opinion.

exactly. thats a point most people miss

Post by **SplishSplash** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:20 pm

Seriously, I don't know what you guys are so hyped up about.

It essentially means that you'll have to spend more money. Since none of you are card manufacturers, I don't know what all the fuss is.

Edit:
And may I remind you that the same things have been said about T&L on graphics cards?

Post by **Geebs** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:26 pm

So how would you design a chip to be better at physics than a simple brute force approach? Everyone uses Newtonian physics or a version of the same, which is hardly a mindbendingly complicated series of equations, so the difficulty is simply keeping track of all the objects. Why wouldn't an x86 be able to deal with that?

Actually I'm a total hypocrite, back when PCs first started to be used for gaming (in CGA), I was always going on about the Amiga's architecture....

Post by **Grudge** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:28 pm

I'm guessing that there are some "standard" algorithms that are used when doing physics calculations in games. If you build custom parallell hardware pipelines for those algorithms, I guess you'll be able to make those calculations a lot faster than if you use a general purpose CPU without those special pipelines.

Of course you'll need a special API, just like for graphics, but according to the articles they are working on that too.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:33 pm

Grudge is looking at this right, it will be like another Graphic's.. DirectX and OpenGL are the two main rendering protocalls are used for renderring picture reguardless of the brand of the videocard... this could be done through the same actions of these cards..

i sence that its going to be reletivly close to the Voodoo 2 SLI dispute, its an add on card rather than built in, but it will merge into a feature of something.

As for just the cpu to handel this? i agree! it can handel it! but having another Proc to take the load off of a DRAINING process that would be phsyic's would give a HUGE boost in performance and it would be a huge load lifted off of the CPU..

Anyway, thats enough of a rant...

*waits for PsyicalGL*

Post by **Grudge** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:40 pm

The thing is that you can do so much more cool stuff with a dedicated PPU. The article mentions 100% destructible environments for example, and other things are particle systems like smoke, clouds, explosions and weather effects can be made into physics object.

Post by **bitWISE** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:46 pm

Lol that acronym is full of teh funny

Post by **U4EA** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:49 am

I'd like to be able to toss windows around my desktop with realistic physics ... in 3D!!!

Post by **Grudge** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:08 am

It's in Longhorn.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:11 am

Grudge wrote:It's in Longhorn.

nuh uh

Longhorn just adds 3D acceleration for the desktop, like apple has done several years ago.

AFAIK

Post by **U4EA** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:45 am

Yes, but will they have realistic physics in Longhorn?!

I've got a recent Longhorn build I've been meaning to try out for ages, just need a spare machine that can handle it.